


What's So Simple in the Moonlight (By the Morning Never Is)

by ohmyohpioneer



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 22:25:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1566221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyohpioneer/pseuds/ohmyohpioneer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killian seeks out Regina's help to cure Zelena's curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's So Simple in the Moonlight (By the Morning Never Is)

He thinks (in the moment before knocking) about all of the deals he has ever made.

All of the miles he has claimed from inches (hesitantly) granted, and he muses that, well, the time has come to make amends. When one makes deals with the devil (as he did again and some more in the last year - in the last few hundred years), the payment is often heftier than the soul can shoulder.

“Captain,” Regina raises an eyebrow and searches over his shoulder for any company. “What brings you here? Can’t say I was expecting a visit from you. Alone.”

He pushes past the witch and into the foyer, scratching anxiously at the back of his neck, pulled taut with disquietude. “I have a problem,” he looks at his feet, then up to Regina’s cautious gaze. “I think you may be the only person who can help me.”

He can feel her assess him for a moment, the ricochet of her appraising glances off his hunched shoulders and defeated brow.

“Perhaps I can,” she finally says.

\----

They’re sitting at her table nursing tumblers of a brown alcohol he doesn’t bother to ask the name of, when the whole sordid tale spills from his lips and cascades across the table. And, he supposes, if anyone can understand being made a fool with a curse, well, the Evil Queen can.

“So,” he pulls long from his drink, lets the scorching heat of it make him hurt less, “Can you help me?”

She is passing the glass from hand to hand, considering something for a moment. He knows she has the answer from the turn of her lip, but this is a different woman than he first encountered with Cora, and her words are mindfully lined up, carefully counted, before she allows them passage past her tongue.

“Rumple always warns people that ‘all magic comes with a price,’” she is lost in some past life that he is not privy to, but he is fastidiously listening for any hints at a solution. “But what it really comes down to is...balance.”

He sits back in his chair. So it will be the round-about answer, then. “How’s that?”

“Well, magic – for all of its glitter and smoke – is math.”” she smiles, not a joyous thing at all. “When you perform an act of magic, you are taking something from the universe, you’re asking it a favor.”

She laughs now, and he wishes she wouldn’t because suddenly he knows that the price he will pay for a cure will surely break him. “And the universe, well, she’ll want something back.”

“What does she want, then? The universe.”

When she finally meets his eyes, he sees in hers a spark of pity and it burns him. “A kiss.”

“What?”

“Zelena took a kiss, and a kiss is the repayment,” she says, low and sad.

Now he rolls his eyes because, “Yes, I gathered that much.”

Regina shakes her head at this, pauses, draws a breath deep, “No. I can cure you. You just have to give me a kiss.”

He snorts. “Not bloody likely.”

“I didn’t,” her eyes repeat the path his took moments earlier, and her eyebrow arches violently. “I didn’t mean you have to kiss me. What I meant was. A kiss – that you and Emma have shared.”

It doesn’t make sense at all, “I’m not sure I follow, love.”

Her eyes meet his head on, “If there is a kiss, if you and Emma have shared a kiss powerful enough, I can take it from you. I can use it to create an antidote.”

Suddenly The Kiss –  _their only kiss_  – is at the forefront of his mind and he  _knows_  what she means, he  _knows._

“And,” he licks his lips, clenches and unclenches his hand, “And if I give it to you?”

Regina trails her finger along the side of her glass, across the rim, before returning her eyes to his, “It will be taken from you. You won’t remember it.”

And there it is. The price of his sins.

It’s not much, he admits (merely all that he holds dear, the only flicker of hope to keep him afloat in a year of drowning beneath gaping, horrid, rancid waves of loneliness and sorrow).

“Okay,” he relinquishes immediately.

“What?”

He inhales deeply, “I said okay. It’s yours. Now. How do we do this?”

Regina is frozen for a moment, and if his surprise at her willingness to aid him is immense, her bewilderment at his selflessness is immeasurable. “Well,” she sighs, finishes the last of her drink. “Look at us.”

He doesn’t want think about this. He doesn’t want to dwell on all that he is losing (the smell of her so close, the delicate give of her hair beneath his hand, her honeyed exhales and eager inhales).

“Can you do it now?” 

Her nod is terse, and he is grateful she doesn’t say anything when she exists the room quickly.

The house is silent, and these are his last moments with all he has of Emma – all he has of her fleeting affection for him, the only moments of her warmness and solidness beneath his fingers, against his chest.

So he treasures them, tries to commit them to memory, tie them to other places in his mind. He places the the pull of her mouth, the way she tugged his lip, alongside the rumbling, coarse tenor of her laugh. The press of her nose into his cheek he nestles into the image of her frustrated, walking through the forest, cheeks rosy with cold.

He pulls apart this memory the way he did for days, weeks, a year, he plucks each breath – and where it provided comfort before – now it reminds him of his foolishness, his missteps.

If all it takes for Swan to keep her magic, to keep the very essence of her being is for him to sacrifice this (to give up his heart), it’s not even a question.

“Are you ready?” Regina has returned holding a vial – surely too small for the enormity of this kiss.

“Yes,” and if his throat is dry and his chest is aching, it doesn’t mean he is unwilling.

She sits across from him, and reaches for his hand. Clutched between both of hers, he can feel the instant she dips into his past, when she roots about for his fire, his soul.

“Killian,” she says suddenly, and he knows what this kindness, this uncharacteristic gentleness means, and he hesitates because  _is anything worth this_  – but then –

“Aye.” 

And Emma’s lashes, brushing sweetly against his, are dissolving, are vanishing from his mind and the flush in her cheek is slipping, slipping away. Her fingers, bent and white, at his jacket are fading and he  _grabs_ for it, but it is ghostly and ethereal and  _gone._

The last thing he has is her bottom lip, gentle and insistent all at once and –

“I’ve got it,” Regina drops his hand, and it thumps to the table in his stupor.

He reaches into his mind, pulls back layers, and there is  _nothing_. There is a thank you, and a shuffle forward and blackness and she is walking away from him, and he  _doesn’t have her anymore._

The vial – so  _bloody_ small – is filled with a swirling silver, wrapping in and around itself, and  _it is everything he has ever wanted but cannot, should not have_.

Regina stands abruptly, leaving him alone in his hollowness, only to return with the same container – now housing a deep purple substance – minutes (lifetimes) later.

“Here,” she thrusts it forward, “Drink this.”

He toasts her in a gesture he doesn't feel. “Cheers, love.”

When the liquid (warm and cold and scalding and fragrant) slips down his throat, his lips burn and he knows it’s worked.

But his grasp will not surrender the empty vial, and he stares at it intently (perhaps there are traces left, whispers of what they shared – if it was real, and now he cannot be sure).

“Did we?” He finally asks, and he knows the look he gives the queen is pleading.

“Did you what?” she gulps, and he thinks that maybe Robin was right to look for a heart buried within.

“Kiss? Emma and I? Was it real?”

 There is silence and then. “Yes. Yes you did.”

 And that. That is all he has.


End file.
